Every time a door closes, another opens

Friday, we made a bold move.

As part of our “For second prize you get to stay with us two weekends!” campaign with my folks (in which we took them to a dentist office, a swim class, a trip to the mall that didn’t involve shopping, our friends’ basement, and the following), we took them to Lowe’s, in search of two things:

1. A new light bulb for the breakfast room.

2. A new set of back doors.

For the former, the funky non-stocked-at-Safeway halogen bulb in our breakfast room ceiling fan finally burnt out. It’s vaguely appropriate that we did this while my folks were here, since that was the one home improvement project my dad was out for rather than Margie’s — which means that he stood around and made sympathetic clucking noises as I cursed the whole project, the weather, the ceiling, and the entire concept of “fans.”

Anyway, the bulb on the light burnt out a week previously, and the breakfast room became shrouded in semi-darkness. There was just enough light bleeding in from the kitchen on one side and the family room from the other to keep it from being impossible, but not enough to keep it from being very annoying.

So we dragged my folks to Lowe’s to buy a light bulb, rather than curse the semi-darkness. It took some hunting around (the cleaning people had helpfully thrown out the burn-out light bulb we’d left on the counter, so it required interpreting from the cryptic notes on the inside of the ceiling fan), but we got it.

Then the doors.

Our French doors in back have been a PitA for the several years we’ve lived there. They’re single-pane, so they radiate heat out (or in) with breezy abandon — aided by being poorly insulated around the edges and prone to warping when it rains and badly re-re-re-painted around the ten panes on each. And, frankly, when they open in, they tend to block everything in their path, in a room that is already a bit cramped for usage.

We were there, both Margie and I, and Jim has already volunteered to make it part of the Home Improvement Project when he visits end of next month. So we knew we needed to get a pair of doors (pre-hung but not installed) ordered. Determined, forthright, with conviction, we entered the door department, marvelled at the lovely Pelle doors with their lovely high price tags, looked at the more conventional doors, then sat down with the dude at the desk and went through the piece-meal door order. Standard size. Aluminum-clad exterior, stainable wood interior. Removable frame to make the single-pane glass look like ten panes (but much easier to clean). And, most important, outward swinging. Outward swinging. What a concept. No more main door chewing up a third of the kitchen counter, or the left-hand door blocking the way to the family room. Outward swinging. Wonderful.

“Hmmm. Doesn’t let me choose that option. I know we can get it, though. We just have to print it off and fax it to the company.”

Okay.

When all’s said and done, it’s $1100, but it will be $1100 well-spent. And, best of all, we had it done! We’d done it! We’d ordered the doors we’d been grousing about getting ordered for over eight years. Huzzah for us!

The kicker, of course, is that they called back a day or two later to inform us that we, actually, couldn’t get the outswinging doors from that manufacturer. Our only choice (through Lowe’s) is the Pelle, which is several hundred dollars more. Eep.

Margie has a brilliant plan to contact the construction-supply company that custom-made our closet doors in the master bedroom, and we’re going to try that before we fork over for the more expensive ones.

But, damn, we were that close to having it in the groove and just waiting on delivery. Which, for procrastinators with schedule crunches like us was a really neat feeling to (briefly) have.